For a while I’ve been reluctant to switch to Firefox primarily because of the various IE shortcuts that I had grown to learn and love. Furthermore, when a colleague introduced me to Opera and the host of productivity gestures that you could use I was once again faced with learning even more shortcuts. Thankfully Internet Explorer, Firefox and Opera share a large number of shortcuts and with IE 7 there are just a few more you need to make browsing life a little more comfortable.
As pilfered from the IE Blog:
Basic navigation
To do the following | Press this |
Go Back to the last page | Alt+Left Arrow Shift+Mouse wheel up/down also navigates forward and back Backspace |
Go Forward to the next page | Alt+Right Arrow Shift+Backspace |
Stop the page from loading | Escape (Esc) |
Refresh the page | F5 or Ctrl+F5 |
Go to your Homepage | Alt+Home |
Give focus to the Address Bar | Alt+D |
Add “www.†and “.com†to what you typed in the address bar before navigating | Ctrl+Enter |
Scroll down/up the web page | Spacebar / Shift+Spacebar |
Close the window | Alt+F4 |
Others:
Some interesting hotkeys you cannot see by simply looking in the menus …
To do the following | Press this |
Immediately add this site to your favorites | Ctrl+D |
Open your favorites in a folder window | Shift+Click on the “Organize Favorites†menu item |
Put focus on the Information Bar | Alt+N |
Open a link in a new window | Shift+Click |
Open the right click ‘context’ menu for the currently selected item | Shift+F10 |
Change the text size (will be Zoom in IE 7) | Ctrl+Mouse wheel Up/Down |
New in Internet Explorer 7
Tabs:
To do the following | Press this |
Open links in a new tab in the background | Ctrl+Click |
Open links in a new tab in the foreground | Ctrl+Shift+Click |
Open a new tab in the foreground | Ctrl+T |
Switch between tabs | Ctrl+Tab / Ctrl+Shift+Tab |
Close current tab (or current window when there are no open tabs) | Ctrl+W |
Open a new tab in the foreground from the address bar | Alt+Enter |
Switch to the n’th tab | Ctrl+n (n can be 1-8) |
Switch to the last tab | Ctrl+9 |
Close other tabs | Ctrl+Alt+F4 |
Open quick tabs | Ctrl+Q |
Zoom:
To do the following | Press this |
Increase zoom (+ 10%) | Ctrl+(+) |
Decrease zoom (-10%) | Ctrl+(-) |
Original size (100% zoom)* | Ctrl+0 |
Search:
To do the following | Press this |
Go to the Toolbar Search Box | Ctrl+E |
Open your search query in a new tab | Alt+Enter |
Bring down the search provider menu | Ctrl+Down Arrow |
Favorites Center:
To do the following | Press this |
Open Favorites Center to your favorites | Ctrl+I |
Open Favorites Center to your history | Ctrl+H |
Open Favorites Center to your feeds | Ctrl+J |
Mouse Actions:
Even with all these cool keyboard hotkeys we’ve introduced a few helpful shortcuts for mouse users as well.
To do the following with a mouse | Press this |
Open a link in a background tab | Middle mouse button |
Close a tab | Middle mouse button on the tab |
Open a new tab | Double click on empty tab band space |
Zoom the page in/out 10% | Ctrl+Mouse wheel Up/Down |